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Tag Archives: Hamburg

Monday October 1st was the day I was BACK IN LONDON! 🙂 This time me and the Mister headed over via Ryan Air so we arrived very late at night. (From Bremen it is either very early in the morning or late in the night!)

After a good night rest at Travellodge Stanstead we were ready to start our first Roadtrip England! Not only did we visit different Towns and Cities in the United Kingdom during the 5 days but we had the pleasure of meeting up with some lovely people from Twitter as well. Some we have already met back in May and some we met for the very first time.

We met up with the lovely Helen for the first time at her place. After we had some Tea and a bit of chit-chat we took our rented car and drove to the city center for some proper sightseeing ! Oh but before that we had the pleasure of driving through the famous “Spaghetti Junction”, which was really impressive. Take a look!

The weather was semi okay. Lots of rain but we had a lot of fun with our local Brum- Girl Helen aka @pinkgoddess strolling around Birmingham. We were really lucky as it was Helen’s day off so plenty of time to get to know each other beside typing all day long on Twitter! 😉

Birmingham was after London and Manchester the third City I have visited in England. Really liked the mixture between the old and new buildings but more than that I love the accent!!!! Really like the sound and melody! 🙂

Quite some time and a hearty lunch later we were back in the north of Brum. Helen’s Mister Rhys aka @mauvedeity was about to come home from work so we dropped Helen of at home before we met up again. Me and the Mister checked into Travellodge, which was literally 3 minutes from their home! 😀

Half an hour later we four had the arms full of drinkies and walked up to the Curry Place “Balti Garden”. where we wanted to have Dinner. It was such a joyful time. Lots of yummy good food. Great laughter and stories to tell. We continued the drinkies and the fun stories at the Wilkin’s Mannor! Nom nom. Always a pleasure to have PIMM’S with you Helen!! 🙂

Thank you so much Helen& Rhys for the brilliant time! We had so much fun with you and we cannot wait to see you again. Either in Hamburg or in Brum! 🙂

A few of you know that I am on Twitter. It’s almost 1 year since I am on their now. I don’t need to mention how I love to tweet and making friends on there. :))

Over this past year I made several picture postcard exchanges and send and received birthday cards or packages to people who became my friends.

But one thing didn’t happen: A Tweet-up. I have never meet anyone I tweet with.

That changed TODAY!!! 😀

Today I met @BienAgiter and @Helena_Jackson .Two Teenage Girls who live in Hamburg. It was a short but really fun meeting. We had Bubble Tea and laughed a lot. 🙂 I am happy that it was so joyful and not awkward at all, even though I was super nervous before the meeting. The Girls told me they were nervous too. lol^^

Today I want to tell you about the short trip to Germany’s Capital me and the lovely Mister made yesterday (15.-16. June 2011). But before we get things started I need you to get “in the grove” and whats the best to get into a Cities vibe than music?!! 😀 Here are two songs about Berlin. Enjoy!

First video is also from one of my fave bands.:)

And here comes the second video. Ready?? GO!=)

Okay lovely bunch now you are in the right mood for Berlin. 🙂 In the those two vids you had the chance to see also some sights of Germany’s Capital. Hope you liked it?!

Me and Kai road tripped to Berlin to see one of our favourite bands since years: SYSTEM OF A DOWN!!!:) They havent been in Germany for years and as we heard they would come to give one gig over here we knew..we have to GO no matter what! 🙂

We both took two days off from work and drive to Berlin early on Wednesday, 15. June. The distance between Hamburg and Berlin are 289km ( 179.57 miles) , which took us about 3 hours to ride. We already had a hotel room for the night so everything was really relaxed. After we checked in around noon, we strolled around the main shopping area called Kurfürstendamm or Ku’damm 😀

As the gig would start early, which means 7pm we havent had that much of time to go sightseeing or such. It’s not the first time we were there so it wasnt that much of a pity to don’t go seeing all the sights. We had a few shops we love to go, including a Quicksilver shop and of course the famous shopping mall KaDeWe. The best about the shopping center is the food area. You can get EVERYTHING there. So many international brands from all sorts of Countries. flipping brilliant.

The weather in Berlin is always different from anywhere else in Germany. It was very warm and humid and strolling through those air-conditioned shops was really a relief but every now and then every shopping King&Queen needs a time out. We had our at Dolores-Berlin yummy burritos, which were really good.

It took us more than one hour through Berlin to get from the city center to the east of Berlin where the Open Air Stage Wuhlheide is. That was one exciting hour! The traffic in Berlin is MAD!!! No bicycle driveways like in Hamburg so everyone who has a bike drives as he likes on the street..cycling through the queueing cars…Parking is also very experimental in Berlin…park as you like would describe it perfectly.Dont bother that your action would cause a huge traffic….naah just GO FOR IT! 😉

We got there just in time to see the Opening act, which was Dredg .They were really good. Of course we all went mental as

System Of A Down hit the stage around 8pm. The audience was mainly men and every now and then you saw a Girl.That was a bit unusual for me to but I didn’t mind at all. The vibe at the Open Air was amazing. Everyone was singing, dancing and rocking the mosh pit. It was the first time that I was in a Circle Pit. If you don’t know what that means -> take a look at this vid 😀 and it was freaking amazing!!! So much heat and energy. Totally blew my mind!!

Thanks to all the youtubers out there I can show you a vid about yesterday evening rocking with System Of A Down in Berlin.

They played two hours exactly and after that we all looked like we had a shower. So sweaty and wet!! 😀 Our day ended as we drove back to the hotel along of the Bundestag (German parliament) the Brandenburger Tor and the embassies of different Countries.

I don’t need to mention that we just fell a sleep as we got back out of the shower. 😀

Day trips are great. For me they feel like pure adventure. So much to see in a little amount of time. Yes, it is super stressful and exhausting but always worth it! 😀

Today I want to share with you my 10 fave songs at the moment. As you know I LOVE music and I listen to it a lot during the day but this songs are constant companions the last several weeks and months.

I also want to share with you my three fave radio stations: The first is Radio-Canada You can listen to all sorts of great programmes but I felt in love with the Canadian Songwriters Channel! 🙂 Thank you Always Alice aka Amanda 🙂

Maybe some of you noticed that I am not tweeting or facebooking as much as I did the last whole year. The reason is that I have started a new Job at the first of November.

After I graduated from Uni last year with a Bachelor in Social Work I had a job interview and an acceptance but than…dang the financial crises hit in and they didn’t know if they can pay my place of work.

To make a long story short. I decided to wait a whole year for my place of work as I so wanted to have to work there so badly. It wasnt easy and some months really got long for me but in the end the whole waiting was so much worth it.

My new Job is in a Church Community here in Hamburg not far where I live. I am going to be a Fundraiser and a Project manager for 5 social projects who all have the function to educate, to build up or support Single Mum’s and their children as they have in Germany the highest risk of getting and staying poor.

After my second week I can say that I really feel comfortable there. I work 30h a week but when and where I work these thirty hours is completely up to me. I have my own office (the left desk is mine the other one is used by voluntary worker every evening as they run a Help-hotline for Mums from 8 to 10pm) but I can choose to work at home if I feel like that.

The same is with the working times..we dont have a check clock or things like that. We write them down on our own. But what I liked the most is that me and my female Boss have a talk once a week to set up a to-do-list for me and then I can work the list off on my own. She is there for questions and stuff but she lets me do the things alone. So as you can see I love this freedom to work like that. I work in a team with three woman and I really enjoy that even though I am way younger as the other woman. That’s ok.

I am looking forward to this upcoming two years as this job is limited until 2012. I have the feeling that they are going to extend it afterwords but we will see. 🙂

How often do we wish to explore different times, decades and centuries? Taste Meals people back in the days eaten everyday. Wear clothes with natural fabric and colors. Feel the simplicity of day-to-day life and structure of society…

I can only speak for myself and every now and then I would love to pack my bags and travel. Not just into a different Country rather into a completely other time. I truly fancy the British Regency Period with all their elegance, perfect manners, fashion and literature (as you know I am a huge fan of Jane Austen’s novels) but right after that the Middle or so-called Dark Ages keep my interest.

Three days ago me and my Mister had the second chance this summer to travel into the depth of Medieval. After spending a whole day at a Viking Festival in the begin of August, which was held about 1 hour away from Hamburg, we had now the luck that the Dark Age Fest took place in the north-east of Hamburg only a few car minutes from our apartment.

It was a wonderful and big Festival area at the Öjendorfer Lake. Our time travel started after a short walk through the Park at the entry. So many people all ages dressed up like chevalier’s, Highlander, nobleman, warrior, soldiers..

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As time travelers me and Kai had not typical clothes with us but we didn’t felt odd in our normal fashion. We had a splendid time walking through the green grass along the shiny white tents. There were lots of different trader all dressed up and showing their handicraft. What beautiful dresses, leather bags, belts and armour we have seen!

Between the trader tents there also were little wooden houses that offered refreshments. But such a Festival is much more than shopping and food in a different location. Medieval gatherings do always have shows like different kind of battles. Soldier against soldier or a strong battle including horses&riders. There were also a falconer showing their well-trained hawks, fakir and juggler, who entertained the audience with their skills and comic talent.

All over the place there were like 5 stages and you had the chance to see some great bands playing Pagan-Folk, Medieval inspired or simply Scottish or Irish music with bagpipes, bodhran and tin whistle. As it got darker all over the place you can watched candles, lantern’s and torches were switched on and the whole area became mystical. You really got the feeling of visiting a different time. As the bonfire were on, we sat on a bench before stage 2 and saw FAUN in concert. I was very in that moment sitting right next to the man, I love, feeling the warmth of the close bonfire and hear the songs of an almost forgotten time. The view into the darkness was simply stunning as you hardly saw any people but an ocean of fireplaces, torches and candles and above all a dark blue sky with stars sparkling like Diamonds. Sipping a hot apple tea against the coolness of the first autumn evening I was all together peaceful and thankful for such a great experience.

On our travel back home into the 2010’s we got company by two cute little fellas. May I introduce to you Biffy and Luna:

They will always remind us what a great day we had at the Medieval Festival on Saturday sept. 2010.

This week on Wednesday (25.08.2010) me and my lovely Boyfriend had tickets for the sold out Queens of the Stoneage Concert here in Hamburg.

I was super excited as I love to see bands performing live on stage. The location is one of my favourite ones here in Hamburg. Its called Stadtpark and it is a very old and really popular Park in this Hanseatic City of Hamburg. The area in which the concert took place is only a small part of the Park itself. The whole day before the concert started (at 7 p.m.) I found myself looking outside of the window hoping the weather would be good in the evening. Well, at least dry, I hoped by seeing the heavy clouds.

We did not actually went to the concert alone, as Kai brought a workmate, who shared the whole experience with us. I had never met Lena before and I was a bit shy and reserved but polite as I am always with not familiar people but it turned out that me and her had a few similar interests including snowboarding and the urge of learning to surf. So it was really funny.

We got to the Stadtpark just in time (okay we missed the Newcomer)so there were about ten minutes until the band started their set. Belive it or not! The whole concert long it was dry and we even had a beautiful blue sky! I can tell how thankful I was for that, cause Open Air and heavy rain is a bad combination! The set started with a lot of “slow” song but as time flowed by they caught up on speed. Very great moment that was!

Being able to see bands live on stage is one of my greatest pleasures. I feel so much alive and happy if I stand in that crowd singing the songs with all the others and seeing my favourite band perform. I love to dance during the songs and feeling the whole vibe and this special energy always fills me up with excitement and pure joy.

Here are a few bands I have seen in the last few years:

30 Seconds to Mars

Nelly Furtado

Franz Ferdinand

The Hives

The Subways

Black Eyed Peas

Marylin Manson

White Lies

Beaststeaks

Apocalyptica

Kasabian

Seeed

Runrig

Joss Stone

Rooney

David Garrett

The Wombats

Nneka

Mando Diao

Pennywise

Snow Patrol

Maximo Park

Placebo (2x)

Patrice (2x)

The 69 Eyes

Eminem

I am really looking forward to the next concert. I don’t know which one it’s going to be yet but one thing that is for sure –

Every year in the middle of August it is time to enter the Cinema for some wonderful, great, innovative, thrilling and shocking movies. It is time for the Fantasy Film Festival

My wonderful boyfriend and me are always keen to see those movies as they aren’t Hollywood produced movies and it is very refreshing to see very good movies without the A-Liga Stars with well-known names.

From 18.09 until 25. 08 they showed 101 movies. It was again very hard to decide which films we are about to see as you can’t sit in then cinema for 24h. We cut it back until we had 3 movies left. We have seen Solomon Kane

on Saturday and it simply blowed us away. A great Story, stunning pictures and great characters. The second movie called Centurion also a movie played in the wonderful United Kingdom. I simply love Michael Fassbender and he played again very well. An epic, rough but great movie. Very deep Characters and amazing Nature scene. We have seen our last movie yesterday evening. Not a typical Fantasy movie but extraordinary still. Maybe someone knows Four Lions ? It was hilarious from Minute 1 until the end but it truly has some deep moments and some where you ask yourself if it is appropriate to laugh or not. I really can recommend those movies and maybe you agree and see one after watching the trailer.

Would love to hear from you if you have seen some of the movies already or after you have seen them.:)

The funny thing about a Fantasy Film Festival is…yes the movies but right after that…the PEOPLE, who are going to see these movies. I love to watch people and I nearly cracked up as I saw that there are a certain bunch of people. Some would call them *Nerds or *Geeks or *Freaks or *IT’s or *Gamer or *Roleplayer… what so ever. The most of the things they shared was 1st. an i-phone 2nd a Gamer-Shirt with a geeky sentence on it or a pixel drawing or some large animals mostly the shirts were in black. 3rd the Glasses. A large group of these people had large black glasses on their noses. And some of them had books carried with them-can you guess it- they were all Terry Pratchett books and OF COURSE in English. Last but not least I distinguish two groups of Fantasy Film Festival people. The tall and skinny dudes with huge glasses and long hair and the well, the thickly dudes with almost no hair and no glasses.

I am not a hater or so. I simply find it funny that there were so many people on that Festival but they had such a similar taste in clothes, cellphones, books and of course movies. A large Community and I am sure I will see them again-next year.